Right before the two warriors collided, Rowan spun his body into a vicious spinning reverse elbow. Sairaorg planted his feet to avoid being thrown off balance and blocked Rowan's elbow with his forearm, feeling his bones rattle as he did. A massive amount of kinetic energy from the abrupt collision spread out around the two warriors, destroying their surroundings and causing the earth beneath them to crack. As the wave of kinetic energy spread toward the spectators, Nikolai lazily waved his hand, and a dark energy barrier sprang up around them. They all continued enjoying their tea and snacks without even looking away from the fight.
The two warriors, seeing that they no longer had to worry about their surroundings, started using all the prowess their bodies could muster. After blocking Rowan's strike, Sairaorg made a grab for Rowan's throat. Rowan knocked his hand aside and hit him in the solar plexus with a palm strike, pushing him back in the process. Sairaorg used the momentum to execute a backflip, giving himself some distance.
Rowan, unwilling to surrender his advantage, shot forward, chasing after his opponent with the intention of grabbing him in mid-air. Anticipating this, Sairaorg shot his leg upward as his backflip was coming to an end, timing it perfectly and landing a brutal snap kick directly to Rowan's chin. It caused Rowan to abruptly stop and stumble back, clearly dazed. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Sairaorg charged Rowan, slamming his entire forearm into Rowan's breastbone and slamming him into a nearby wall, creating a spiderweb formation of cracks all throughout it from the impact.
Pain exploded from Rowan's chest and the back of his head, shocking him out of his stunned state—just in time to see Sairaorg's massive fist inches from his face. Instinctively, Rowan moved his head to the side just in time for the fist to miss him and Sairaorg's arm to be buried elbow-deep inside the wall. Taking advantage of his momentary opportunity, Rowan slammed his knee into his opponent's ribs and dead-weighted his body, slipping out from under the forearm pinning him to the wall and hitting the ground.
Immediately after hitting the ground, he grabbed his opponent's ankle and swung his legs around, trapping his opponent's leg between his at the hip joint. Using the momentum and his body weight, he slammed his opponent to the ground. By the time Sairaorg realized what was going on, he was flat on his back with a crack in his ribs and trapped in a painful leg lock.
Being the master martial artist that he was, instead of panicking, he quickly decided on a course of action. Using his superior strength, he placed his hand flat on the ground and pushed down hard, twisting his hips to his opposite side as he did so. The force of the push launched both warriors into the air, and the twisting motion allowed him to free his leg, since his opponent could no longer leverage the ground to apply extra pressure to his joints.
Both warriors righted themselves in mid-air and landed a few feet away from each other, watching each other cautiously. As both warriors were battle maniacs, neither of them noticed the massive smiles on each other's faces—both simultaneously thinking the same thought:
"This bastard is fucking good."
Both warriors, energized by the prospect of a worthy opponent, couldn't help themselves and almost immediately went at each other again. This time, as if an unspoken agreement was made between the two, they slowly walked toward each other until they were in striking distance, and then they each took their stance. There was a moment of almost respectful silence until suddenly all hell broke loose, and the two men started going at each other with everything they had left in them, as if determined to make this the final confrontation.
An overhand right came smashing down into Rowan's face. Twisting his neck at the moment of impact to lessen the force of the blow, he abruptly twisted his body the other way and came back with a short, devastating elbow that landed on Sairaorg's chin. He then attempted to follow it up with a short-motion uppercut, but he was abruptly headbutted as his fist landed on his opponent's collarbone just below the neck, missing Sairaorg's chin and not doing nearly as much damage as Rowan had hoped.
Recovering quickly, both warriors were at each other again, neither one taking a single step back. Sairaorg's superior strength and experience was on obvious display during their exchanges, but Rowan was smaller and faster, and able to generate more momentum into his strikes to make up for the power difference due to his smaller size—his natural talent for combat allowing him to adapt on the fly, a skill that couldn't be taught.
Blood flew everywhere as the two warriors went back and forth, rooted to the ground, neither one willing to give any ground or take a single step back. And then finally, Sairaorg did something he had yet to do during the exchange. It happened after a particularly dangerous strike to his liver from a gazelle punch from Rowan that left him slightly doubled over. Rowan attempted to follow up the strike with a vicious shotgun jab that would have made Liston and Hearns very proud. Rowan leaned back slightly with his upper body so he could quickly and comfortably line up the shot directly to his opponent's temple, attempting to end the fight then and there.
But for the first time, his opponent actually dodged.
Up until this point, Sairaorg had been taking every hit in this exchange, confident in his superior durability. But years of training, fighting, and honing his instincts caused his body to move on its own—his instincts recognizing the danger before he himself consciously did. For a split second, the two of them looked at each other in absolute disbelief.
But Sairaorg, being the more experienced of the two, recovered a split second faster. Suddenly, a full-powered lunging straight was screaming toward Rowan's unprotected face. Desperately, he tried to put his guard up and simultaneously slip under the punch, but it was too late. He had been caught off guard.
The punch slipped in between the gaps—Rowan had not completely put up his guard. Before Rowan could tighten his guard, it hit him full-on, right as he was trying to duck down. Catching him flat-footed, unable to rebuild his center of gravity or stop his downward momentum, he took the full force of the punch. Pain exploded inside his skull, and before he lost consciousness, his only thought was:
"Fuck... I almost had the bastard though."
His thoughts were vulgar. Unbeknownst to him, there was a small smile on his face as he flew toward the opposite side of the battleground, completely unconscious.
Nikolai appeared out of nowhere and gently caught Rowan's unconscious body before it could slam into anything. Looking down at the small, satisfied smile on his disciple's face, a small smile of his own surfaced.
"Well done, my disciple," he said as he gently placed Rowan on the ground. He then snapped his fingers, and shadows wove themselves around Rowan, healing his injuries and easing his transition back to consciousness.
Sairaorg laughed heartily as he walked over to Rowan and patted him on the back and said, "That was a wonderful fight, cousin. You've come a long way since the last time I saw you, when you were…" He looked away and scratched his cheek awkwardly, looking anywhere but at Rowan.
And Rowan said, "When I was banished Yes…geez, it's not a big deal ,"
"Well, I didn't know if you were still sore about it."Sairaorg said.
Then Rowan replied, "I'm massively wealthy, have large amounts of land, and a secluded area away from all the other nobles and any form of politics. What they think is banishment, I call paradise."
Sairaorg said, "Huh, I've never looked at it that way."
Nikolai cleared his throat and said, "Well done, both of you. That was a superb fight. Now Rowan, I'm pleased by your progress, and even more pleased that we're on schedule."
Rowan said, "You keep saying something about a schedule. What schedule?"
"My schedule," Nikolai replied. "And it's important I remain on schedule. And no, I won't elaborate. But I must depart, my disciple."
Rowan said, "I understand. Thank you for training me."
Nikolai smiled warmly and said, "You're very welcome. It has been a pleasure to torme— cough —I mean train you."
Rowan's eye twitched and his smile became forced as he said, "So you were just leaving?"
Nikolai said, "Yes, I was indeed. Until next time. I'll be checking in every now and then, and if I see that you've been slacking, I won't hesitate to put you through worse," he said with a dark smile on his face.
And at that, a chill went through Rowan's body and he said, "Me? Slack off? Never."
"We'll see," Nikolai said as he opened a portal and left.
Rowan returned to the patio, where Sairaorg, Regulus, Bancho, and Sora were engaged in conversation, and joined them. Then he saw a system update:
Quest Complete: Training For Real
Reward:Skill: Void Touched
Rank: Master (Current)
Terms for evolution: Currently unqualified to know
Description: You have been tested by the Void and acknowledged by its Supreme Master as worthy of wielding a miniscule part of it's infinite power
Ability 1: Void's Anchor (Passive)
Effect: You are a fixed point in all of reality you may act independently of any form of causality that would shackle you to conventional rules as you move between and within other worlds dimensions and realities and can't be slain in any world reality or dimension other than your home world upon receiving critical damage anywhere but your home world you are instead banished back to your home world and may not return to the place you received the damage for an amount of time that varies depending on the severity of the effect you had upon it
Current Home World: DxD
Ability 2: Void's Aegis (Passive)
Effect: You are immune to any and all debuffs and soul attacks as well as anything that would erase you from reality (Omnidimensional Transcendent Level beings may bypass this ability at it's current level)
"Holy shit—hello, game changer," Rowan said with a smile.